Safe Harbor (14 page)

“What?” she asked.

“I was just a wharf rat,” he said.

“But a cute one,” she said, her eyes drawn to his shoulders again, not understanding why he suddenly seemed so serious.

“You know,” he began, tugging the mask off his face, “there was a time I would have killed to hear you say that.”

“When you were eight?” Taking off her mask too, she smiled. “Somehow I don't think you would have even noticed. All you cared about was learning how to sail—as fast as possible.”

“Not when I was eight,” Sam began. “When I was older, and you were living on the Vineyard . . .”

Dana's mouth dropped open. How would he have known that? She thought of Jonathan, telling her that he had seen her on the quai, watched her at the market. Sam's words brought back that memory of being seduced by Jon, and she suddenly felt off balance.

The girls came wheeling up to the garage on their bikes, air whistling behind them. Quinn's basket overflowed with hot dog rolls and yellow mustard. Allie's contained the paper plates and napkins.

“Aunt Dana, Mr. Porter at the store gave us a free bottle of ketchup for good luck because we bought so much stuff!” Allie announced.

“I think he did the same for me and your mother when we had our hot dog stand.”

“You guys are having a hot dog stand?” Sam asked.

“Yes, tomorrow,” Allie said. “We put up signs all over the beach. We're raising money for a good cause.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know,” Allie said. “It's Quinn's, and she won't tell me what it is. But she says it's good, so I'm helping.”

Dana waited for Sam to ask Quinn and be told it was none of his business, but he didn't. Once again she admired his sense around the girls, and she wondered whether she'd overreacted before.

“I didn't know you were coming today,” Quinn said, leaning on her handlebars and staring hard at Sam.

“Well, I thought it was about time your aunt got the boat in the water. So here I am.”

“Hmmm,” Quinn said, giving that statement due thought. Deciding she approved, she climbed off her bike.

“Think you'll want to go sailing again?”

Waiting for Quinn to reply, Dana's heart sped up. But Quinn just shook her head. “I don't think so. Don't hold your breath waiting, okay?”

“Deal,” Sam said.

“Are you coming back?”

“When?” he asked.

“Tomorrow. For the hot dog stand.”

“Sure,” he said. “I'll try.”

Nodding, Quinn unloaded the basket. She handed the mail to Dana, including a red-and-blue-bordered airmail envelope from Jonathan. Wordlessly, she carried her purchases up the hill. Allie stayed to watch the painting; waiting till it was done, she politely asked Dana to take her swimming.

Sam wiped his hands with turpentine. “I'd better be going,” he said, handing her the can and rag.

“Thank you, Sam,” she said.

“For leaving?” He grinned.

“No. For this—” She pointed at the boat. “It was a lot of work.”

“Well, I didn't have plans today.”

“Seriously,” she said, their eyes locked. She wanted to know what he was thinking, what he was getting out of spending a beautiful summer morning painting an old boat with her. “Why did you come?”

He placed his hands on her shoulders and stared straight into her eyes. Slowly, a smile came to his face like the sun rising out of the eastern bay. “Because a sailor should have a boat to sail.”

“A sailor?”

“You, Dana.”

Dana swallowed, acknowledging what he'd said. Her heart began to beat faster, as if she'd just felt a fresh salt breeze in her hair, but she couldn't quite smile.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, taking a step forward. When she nodded, he went on. “What do you think I want? Why do you seem so suspicious of me?”

“Because I've learned the hard way,” she said, holding Jonathan's letter, “that people aren't always what they seem to be at first.”

“But sometimes they are,” Sam said.

Dana couldn't dispute that. It was only after he drove away, when she stood by the garage admiring the freshly painted
Mermaid,
that she thought of how he had mentioned seeing her when she had lived on the Vineyard and wondered how that had come about.

She thought about how she and Lily had lived in Gay Head, how Lily had met Mark, her island man. A carpenter, he had come to their house to fix a broken porch rail. Lily had fallen in love with him, and six months later, he had proposed to her on Honeysuckle Hill, a small rise covered with flowers and vines, with long views from Gay Head to Menemsha, across the trees and ponds. “That's our sacred ground,” Lily had proclaimed, and every year on the anniversary of his June sixth proposal, she and Mark returned there to camp out.

Quinn had been conceived and born on the island. All of Mark's old friends had showered her with love. They had baby-sat. Lily had taken her for long hikes and bike rides all over the island. A lifelong Vineyarder, Mark had kept them on the island as long as he could. But the year-round economy off island was better, so Lily had tempted him home to Hubbard's Point. From there, he had started his real estate development company and become quite well off.

Sometimes old friends contacted him for jobs. Some were willing to leave the island, but most weren't. That was the thing: Mark wasn't allowed to build there. Because Lily had adored the place so much, revered the incredible natural beauty of the moors and beaches, Mark had agreed to never develop Vineyard land.

When winters got tough and men were out of work, some agreed to fly to New York or Hartford or Louisville or Dayton—wherever Mark Grayson was building his new tract. He liked to hire islanders but never at the expense of excellence. Proud of his buildings, he wanted only the best.

Thinking of those things, wondering about his last projects, Dana sat on the wall to read the letter from Jonathan. The sun shined down, causing her to squint. He wanted to know whether she wanted the things from her studio. Her paints and canvases were just sitting there, and he couldn't believe she didn't want them. All she had to do was ask, and he would ship them to the States.

She crumpled the letter and held it in her hand.

 

T
HE NEXT MORNING
it started to rain, and the bad weather lasted for four days. Quinn panicked the first day, but by the second she was near despair. Wind had torn down the few signs that hadn't already been ruined by raindrops. The hot dogs, mustard, and ketchup would keep, but all that money for fresh rolls!

“They'll be stale,” she said. “They'll have little green mold dots.”

“No, they won't,” Aunt Dana said, putting the plastic bags into the freezer.

“The buns are ruined,” Quinn said. “Ruined!”

“I'm telling you, all will be well. When I was your age, the exact same thing happened. We had put up signs, everyone had promised to come, and then the rains came instead. Quinn, it was like a tropical deluge. My mother did the same thing I'm doing now: put things in the freezer to wait it out.”

“What happened?” Quinn asked. “Did you get to have the stand?”

“We did.”

Quinn cringed inwardly. She didn't want to show Aunt Dana how much it hurt to hear her say “we.” She noticed it always, but on dark rainy days like this, thinking of the other half of Aunt Dana's “we” made Quinn's bones ache.

“You will too,” Aunt Dana said. “You'll make plenty of money to buy whatever it is you're saving up for.”

Quinn was silent, imagining the things Aunt Dana thought she wanted to buy. Normal twelve-year-old-girl stuff: CDs, short skirts, baggy pants, makeup, pierced earrings. The idea of such things seemed as far away to Quinn as the distant shores of Long Island, across the Sound.

Closing her eyes, Quinn felt in her heart the one thing she wanted to buy with the money. One answer, one little answer.

She thought of her aunt's pictures, the ones she had seen at the Black Hall Gallery: big squares of water, each painting like a photograph of one small section of the sea. She imagined bringing into focus that spot under the Sound where her parents had been lost, framed in her mind like one of Aunt Dana's pictures.

“There,” Aunt Dana said, looking into the open freezer door, letting the frosty air billow into her face. “All packed away. Those hot dog rolls are safe from mold now, Quinn.”

“What if Sam doesn't come back? What if it rains so long, he forgets about the hot dog stand?”

“Then we'll call and remind him.”

“I want him to come.”

“I know you do.”

“Do you too?”

Aunt Dana looked surprised to be asked, instantly on guard. “Sure,” she said carefully. “I like Sam.”

Quinn nodded. She wasn't sure why, but she wasn't reassured. Aunt Dana didn't sound as if she meant it. Quinn had felt good, coming home to find Sam helping paint the boat. He balanced things out a little, a man in this house of women. Grandma certainly hadn't had any men around when she'd stayed with them, and Aunt Dana's boyfriend Jonathan—whoever he was—was far away in France. Besides, Sam was the only one who could help Quinn.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Aunt Dana asked, putting her arm around Quinn's shoulders. “We can sit by the window and wait for the rain to pass.”

“No, thank you.” Quinn tried to smile. Longer to wait, she thought. One more day until she could earn the money to pay Sam. One more day she had to wait for her answer. The minute Aunt Dana left the room, she ran out into the rain to go to Little Beach and sit on her rock.

CHAPTER
10

H
EARING A KNOCK ON THE DOOR,
D
ANA CALLED
out, “Come in!” She was sitting in the living room, midway through writing a letter, when Marnie walked in wearing a streaming yellow slicker. She stood off to the side, trying not to drip on the floor.

“It's okay,” Dana said. “With all the wet bathing suits that have come through this house, I think we can handle a few raindrops.”

Marnie laughed, shaking off like a wet dog, hanging her slicker on a hook by the stone hearth. “You're right. All those times we trekked in with sandy feet, leaving little wet patches on the cushions when we sat down . . .”

“I did the same at your house. Beach life . . .”

“We're so lucky to have these places,” Marnie said, looking around the room at the salt-darkened wainscoting and old wicker furniture.

“And the grandparents who built them.”

“And gorgeous young sailors scraping paint in sweaty T-shirts. Hello, Adonis!”

“Adonis?”

“That handsome and, incidentally, rather intriguing fellow I saw you painting with.”

“Oh,” Dana said, feeling herself blush. “That was just Sam.”

“‘Just' Sam? He looked like more than enough to me.”

“I've known him a long time. He's an old sailing student of mine and Lily's—dating way back.”

“What's wrong with ‘way back'? That makes getting to know each other so much easier.”

Dana became silent. She agreed with Marnie.
Really
knowing someone was more important than she had ever, in her solitary life, imagined. But that took years. Young men didn't even know themselves. If that was true, how could they ever know someone else?

Sam seemed so deep, different than other people his age, as if he had already lived through a lot, understood the ways she and the girls felt. But that was probably just a trick of her mind. She couldn't afford to think like this. He'd get tired of their lives, their dramas and trauma. Who would want to hang around a single aunt and her two orphan nieces for very long? Not Jonathan, that was for sure. . . .

“Well, anyway,” Marnie continued, “I like imagining you with Sam. He looked nice, and you were laughing, as if you were having fun. Fun is good, Dana.”

“I know,” Dana said, staring at a small dark spot across the cove.

“What good is being a world-traveling artist if you don't have a little fun in your life? I hope it's not Sam's age. Age is about the least significant thing going. Older, younger, who cares, if someone makes you smile? It doesn't matter.”

“Age matters,” Dana said, glancing down at the letter on her lap.

“What do you mean?”

“My last boyfriend was younger. It didn't work out.”

“I'm sorry, Dana,” Marnie said. She had picked up on the hurt; Dana couldn't hide it, even after six months.

“My boyfriend—my ex-boyfriend,” she said, “was ten years younger. I told myself it didn't matter. We had so much in common that had nothing to do with age. He was a painter, and we shared a studio in Honfleur. We took trips, painted en plein air, set up our easels by the Bosporus, the Aegean. . . .”

“It sounds idyllic.”

“It was for a while.” Dana blinked, her gaze drawn to the mantel. She stared at the plain brass box, and her throat ached. “When Lily died, everything changed. I couldn't paint; some days I couldn't even get out of bed.”

“We all felt that way,” Marnie agreed.

“Jonathan couldn't understand,” Dana said. “He tried at first—he has a sister he loves, and I think he imagined how he'd feel if anything happened to her. But he got tired of me.”

“
Tired
of you?”

“Impatient, I guess. I couldn't paint; I didn't want to travel anymore. I couldn't see the point of it . . . I had a model, and I fired her.”

“A model?”

“I used her for my mermaids—never mind, it doesn't matter. The thing was, I couldn't work at all anymore.”

“That's what grief does,” said Marnie, taking Dana's hand. Dana knew she knew: Marnie's father had died when she was only fourteen.

“Yes, it is,” Dana said quietly. “I told myself Jonathan's never lost anyone close to him. He's lucky—how would he know? He's too young; he's never been that hurt or disappointed by life. . . .”

“Yet,” Marnie said.

Dana nodded. She had made excuses to herself for the way Jonathan had acted. He had held her for the first twelve hours after she'd gotten the news, held her while she'd cried and keened and tried to absorb the news of Lily's death. He had driven her to the airport to go to the funeral, and he had picked her up when she came back.

“We weren't really serious,” she said. “I thought we were, but we weren't. I was wrong, falling in love with someone so young.”

“Do you think that's because of his age? Or because of his character?”

Dana was quiet, and she surprised herself by thinking of Sam. Something made her think he would have been more patient with her, not try to rush her through her feelings. She had realized soon after her return from Lily's funeral that Jon expected her to be back to normal right away.

He'd pack picnics and load the car with their paints and easels, then stand silently in the doorway of their bedroom, watching Dana lie in their bed. He'd accept invitations to dinner, get upset when Dana said she wasn't going.

“You've got to get past this, over this,” he'd say. “Let me help you. . . .”

“How do I get ‘past'—‘over'—losing Lily?” she had cried to him one day when he'd wanted to take her to Paris to paint in the Bagatelle.

“This is your life, Dana,” he had yelled back. “Not Lily's, not anyone else's. She died two months ago, and you're still in bed. Hiding under the covers isn't going to bring her back.”

Dana hadn't even had a response for that.

“Your niece called,” he had said, sounding frustrated, knowing that the only thing to jump-start Dana was a call from one of the girls. He knew that she'd drag herself out of bed, go to the phone, and call home. Quinn and Allie could get her moving when all else, even he, had failed.

Dana had found herself living in a life that didn't work. What was she doing, yelling back and forth about her sister's death? She was learning all about walls and armor, all the defenses a person put up when fear and loss crowded in. The bedsheets were her castle walls; nothing could get in and hurt her while she lay there, warm and hidden, away from the world.

She learned other things too. She couldn't make someone—Jonathan—understand what she was going through if he wasn't ready to understand. They'd been calling what they felt for each other love. Such a beautiful word, but too big for what they had.

She pictured him now. He was so strong, so intense and talented, her beautiful lover. Tall and broad, with wide dark eyes in his tan, olive-colored skin, long black hair knotted behind his head, he took after his Greek mother. Dana had met him her first week in Honfleur. Both American artists drawn to Normandy's clear light, they had set up their easels by the port, wanting to paint the quai.

They had circled each other's work. He was good, very good. He told her that he had been watching her all along, that he was in awe of her canvas: Staring at the narrow houses squeezed together along the port, she had somehow seen the sea instead. Her canvas was a wash of blue and green, the tall port houses seen through water, shimmering beneath the waves.

“It's magical,” he said, staring at her painting. “Brand new. You actually see it that way or make it up as you go along?”

“I see it that way.”

“Nothing's brand new anymore. Art school's full of people trying to make their own style, find their own vision, but it's all just one big rehash. You know? It's after Wyeth or Welliver or Picasso or Renoir or Pollock or Metcalf, you do your best to make it your own, but it's always after someone. Not you, though. I've never seen anything like this before. What's your name, so I can say I knew you when we were both painting in Honfleur?”

“Dana Underhill,” she said, smiling.

“I'm Jon Hull,” he said, shaking her hand without bothering to wipe the paint off his first. Grinning down at their clasped fists, he'd held on tighter. “Maybe originality's catching. I'll get some of yours through the oils if I shake hard enough.”

“You're very good,” she said, admiring his canvas. Their ages were very much in play; she was the older, more experienced artist. She had lived all over the world, taught at RISD and Parsons, exhibited often. But she admired his technical skill, his palette, his dreamy use of light. While she examined his painting, she realized that he had not let go of her hand.

Looking into his deep-set eyes, she felt shocked by the lust she saw in his gaze, the slow smile lifting his lips. He had to be ten years younger. This was dangerous, unknown territory. Gorgeous movie stars dated younger men. Women who spent time on their appearance, who took pride in the way they looked. Dana hardly noticed. So busy painting, some days she forgot to brush her hair.

“Come have a drink with me,” he said.

“No, I have to—”

“Listen,” he said. “We're two American painters standing on the quai in Honfleur. See that café over there? That's where Claude Monet and Eugène Boudin set the standard for color and light. Let's do our part for Impressionism, okay?”

“Well, if you put it that way,” she replied, so entranced by the idea of two Americans in France discussing art that she forgot to be uncomfortable.

They had gone to Au Vieux Honfleur, taken a table on the terrace. Jon ordered a plateau des fruits de mer, piled high with langoustines, spider crabs, the fat and meaty crabs called torteaux, clams, periwinkles, and four kinds of oysters. After one bottle of gewürztraminer they ordered another. Dana sketched the bowl of halved lemons. Jon drew the oysters on ice. She started to sketch him sketching the oysters, and suddenly he came around the table and kissed her.

They went back to her studio. She showed him her paintings and he helped her out of her clothes. They lay on the little daybed in the corner, where she often took naps during long days of work—calling up the mermaids, those muses deep in her subconscious, to help her find the inspiration needed to finish her work—and they made love.

Her studio became his studio. He told her he wanted to study under her—in bed as well as in art. He moved in the next week, lugging his belongings from the hostel he'd been staying at. They were madly in love. Jon unlocked passions Dana hadn't known she had. The mermaids became obsolete. With Jonathan Hull in her life, who needed muses? Love with a younger man was totally underrated. What man her own age had the energy, creativity, and romance to fill Dana with this lust for life?

“What are you thinking about?” Marnie asked now.

“How being with a young man isn't worth it. It's the biggest mistake I've ever made,” Dana replied.

She remembered that morning when Jon told her Quinn had called. Dana had phoned back, dressed in her nightgown, helplessly holding the receiver and listening to Quinn cry and cry.

Jon had watched her from the doorway. He had held her, trying to comfort her. But when she couldn't let go, he backed off and told her he thought he needed a break. It would be good for them both, he said—he knew he was driving her crazy, telling her to smile, to get over it. Packing his easel into the car, he drove off to Étretat to paint.

Dana had known it was going to be over soon. The truth of their differences was too great to ignore. The end came with a true identity crisis. Dana had spent most of her life being independent, avoiding relationships for her art. Now she needed someone to help her deal with Lily's death and love her through the worst, but that person was never going to be Jon.

He must have begun seeing Monique soon after that day. She caught them on the daybed three weeks later, both naked and young and beautiful, and although she thought her heart would break again, it was nothing compared to the loss of Lily.

“So what you're saying is, you're going to hold him against Sam?”

“It's not like that,” Dana said, “between Sam and me.”

“For an artist, you're pretty blind. Even I could see—”

“Marnie, I see what I need to see,” she said in a rush, disturbed by the idea. “Don't worry about me, okay?”

“Looks like you're watching the beach right now,” Marnie said, noticing Dana's position by the window as she sat on the adjacent sofa, deciding to drop the subject of Sam.

“Quinn's sitting on that rock,” Dana said, pointing at the tiny dark spot atop the biggest granite boulder across the cove at Little Beach.

“Keeping vigil.”

Dana didn't reply.

“For her parents,” Marnie said. “Martha told my mother she did it all year—even through the winter. Watched the spot where they went down as if she hoped they'd somehow appear.”

Quinn, Dana thought, silently staring at that black dot on the big rock. And she thought: How couldn't he understand what happened, how death could make one person take to bed and another person sit on a rock for an entire year?

Sitting on a rock in the rain, praying for a vision of Lily, made much more sense to her than the idea of picking up a paintbrush, going back to work, pretending to get back to someone else's idea of normal. To Dana, watching the small, dark, unyielding shape that was her niece, Quinn's actions seemed the most natural things in the world.

 

S
AM HADN
'
T THOUGHT
about loneliness in a long time.

As a child, he had known it well. His brother was gone, his parents were distracted, and Sam had been pretty much left on his own. Now, sitting in the cabin of his Cape Dory while rain lashed the deck above, he tried to concentrate on his papers and wondered why he suddenly felt so lonely again—with a vengeance.